When comparing the evolution in market share of Linux and OpenBSD, two operating systems that were born around the same time, a question comes to mind: why is there such a difference in market penetration? Linux, on one side of the spectrum, with a license that supposedly impairs commercial venues, has enticed companies and organizations to adopt and support it under varying commercial models, while the BSD derivatives (FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD), with a larger history and an allegedly more commercial friendly license haven't been as successful to gather a large installed base and widespread adoption.

I don't think it's the license. I think advertising has something to do with it. Remember Windows 95? I also think it's the number of developers and the amount of time dedicated to development. You have Canonical throwing money at everything. Then you have Red Hat with their "Enterprise Solutions". Linux is very experimental. ANYBODY can do ANYTHING with it. You don't like the direction one person wants to go, you go in your own direction. And, if you just want stable, you can get that, too. The BSDs... I see a lot of "waiting for permission". I can try and make the comparison as a democratic society to a dictatorship. Where linux would be the democracy and the BSD has the dictator who has the last say and control of everything. Don't get me wrong here, though. I prefer using the BSDs over linux (if it wasn't for that damn Adobe flash), but I think it's the way development happens that has allowed linux to gain a greater market share.

Right, linux IS just the kernel. Then that makes this entire article and debate pointless and stupid, since the author tried comparing two "operating systems". Then again, linux and the BSD kernels are all open source. The "official" kernel doesn't have to be used, and Debian is proving you can have a GNU userland with a BSD kernel. So then I'm brought back in a full circle to say it's not the license. It's advertising and exposure.